How to Customise the Welcome Text When SSHing Into a Server

Ok, so if you’re reading this, you’re probably a bit of a geek like myself. We’ve all seen the “Welcome Mr Stark” message that appears on Iron Man when Tony Stark logs into his private server. i.e. in other words, SSH’ing into his server.

So, how easy or difficult is it to get this set up? Well, it’s remarkably easy to configure this and it is all down to configuring your ‘Message of the Day’ on your server. So let’s have a play around.

Firstly, generate some text that you want to display, you could simple try the basis such as “Hello”, but that’s a bit boring. Instead, let’s look to replicate the same message that we can see on Tony Start’s private server. You’ll find many different ASCI Art Generators online if you search, so find one that you like the look of. Here are just a few examples that I’ve generated to give you an idea of the different styles you can use.

So once you’ve got the text that you want to configure, simply SSH into your server and run the command;

sudo -s

Which will switch your user over to the Sudo user, you’ll need to enter in the password to do this.

Next, run the command;

nano /etc/motd

Which will create a new file for you, if it doesn’t already exist, or edit the current file if it is already there. Feel free to use the editor of your choice here, personally I prefer the Nano editor as I find it more intuitive to use. Simply paste your text into here, and save the file.

Simple, you’re done. Then the next time you login to your server via SSH you’ll be greeted with the nice message that you entered;

Michael founded Contrado Digital in 2013. He has experience working with national and multi-national brands in a wide range of industries, helping them achieve awesome results. Michael regularly speaks at local universities and industry events while keeping up with the latest trends in the digital industry.